Connecting the Kootenays chronicles the history of the Kootenay Lake ferry service from its modest beginnings in 1921 through to its 100th anniversary in 2020. -- From back cover
Contents
The Great Trunk Road (1908-1921) ; The Canadian Pacific Railway Fills the Gap (1884-1913) ; The Nasookin: Queen of Kootenay Lake (1913-1930) ; Nelson to Kuskanook: A Trip to Remember (1921-1930) ; The Provinical Government Steps In (1931) ; The Great Depression and the Second World War (1931-1947) ; Saying Goodbye to the Nasookin (1947-1956) ; A New Ferry and a New Route (1947-1954) ; The Auxiliary Ferry: The Balfour (1954) ; Growing Pains for the Two-Ferry Service and the Opening of the "Skyway" (1955-1963) ; Labour Strife, Major Rebuilds and Looking beyond the New Millennium (1964-1999) ; The Osprey 2000, Privitization and Facing Challenges Ahead (2000-2020)
Stephen R. Bown continues to revitalize Canadian history with this thrilling account of the engineering triumph that created a nation. In The Company, his bestselling work of revisionist history, Stephen Bown told the dramatic, adventurous and bloody tale of Canada's origins in the fur trade. With Dominion he continues the nation's creation story with an equally thrilling and eye-opening account of the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In the late 19th century, demand for fur was in sharp decline. This could have spelled economic disaster for the venerable Hudson's Bay Company. But an idea emerged in political and business circles in Ottawa and Montreal to connect the disparate British colonies into a single entity that would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. With over 3,000 kilometers of track, much of it driven through wildly inhospitable terrain, the CPR would be the longest railroad in the world and the most difficult to build. Its construction was the defining event of its era and a catalyst for powerful global forces. The times were marked by greed, hubris, blatant empire building, oppression, corruption and theft. They were good for some, hard for most, disastrous for others. The CPR enabled a new country, but it came at a terrible price. In recent years Canadian history has been given a rude awakening from the comforts of its myths. In Dominion, Stephen Bown again widens our view of the past to include the adventures and hardships of explorers and surveyors, the resistance of Indigenous peoples, and the terrific and horrific work of many thousands of labourers. His vivid portrayal of the powerful forces that were molding the world in the late 19th century provides a revelatory new picture of modern Canada's creation as an independent state."-- Provided by publisher.
North of the Color Line examines life in Canada for the estimated 5,000 blacks, both African Americans and West Indians, who immigrated to Canada after the end of Reconstruction in the United States. Through the experiences of black railway workers and their union, the Order of Sleeping Car Porters, Sarah-Jane Mathieu connects social, political, labor, immigration, and black diaspora history during the Jim Crow era.
By World War I, sleeping car portering had become the exclusive province of black men. White railwaymen protested the presence of the black workers and insisted on a segregated workforce. Using the firsthand accounts of former sleeping car porters, Mathieu shows that porters often found themselves leading racial uplift organizations, galvanizing their communities, and becoming the bedrock of civil rights activism.
Examining the spread of segregation laws and practices in Canada, whose citizens often imagined themselves as devoid of racism, Mathieu historicizes Canadian racial attitudes, and explores how black migrants brought their own sensibilities about race to Canada, participating in and changing political discourse there.
(From publisher's website)
Contents
Introduction. Birth of a nation: race, empire, and nationalism during Canada's railway age -- Drawing the line: race and Canadian immigration policy -- Jim Crow rides this train: segregation in the Canadian workforce -- Fighting the empire: race, war, and mobilization -- Building an empire, uplifting a race: race, uplift, and transnational alliances -- Bonds of steel: depression, war, and international brotherhood.